Movie of the Day – Beginners

Today, I am going back to an older review I did in August about the film Beginners.  I recently got the chance to re-watch the film over the holiday break and still found myself enraptured with the beauty and story of the film.  Beginners is a film that could have went a different path in the overall story, instead focusing on the romanticism that blossoms at every stage in life.  It’s not about endings, although for some characters their end comes in a real way, but rather about the beginning of something new, something that we all experience.  It’s love, at the most base perhaps, that propels the story about three people, all tied to together from each others beginning, middle and end of their lives.  Christopher Plummer plays a newly free gay man, one that wasn’t able to fully express himself till after the death of his wife.  Feeling that he could begin the life that he always wanted, Ewan McGregor’s character must learn to understand and begin a new relationship with a father he thought he knew.  All the while his love life is at a constant stop and go, he begins to feel love, or something close to it, when Melanie Laurent comes into his life.

I am linking to my original review so that I can save myself some of the emotions and finger dexterity I will use in writing about this again.  Even seeing the film a second time I couldn’t help but feel moved by the beauty and honesty that comes from the story and acting.  It’s like watching people fall in love again for the first time, particularly from Christopher Plummer’s perspective.

I think this is one of the better romantic films to come out this year, next to Like Crazy of course, that was vastly under appreciated and not widely seen.  It’s a gorgeous movie through and through, with the soft touches that Mike Mills brings to the cinematography and framing, this is a pretty picture with pretty actors.

This is, at its heart, a movie about starting over.  Not just about falling in love, although it does make you want to go home to your loved one and hug them, but it’s about understanding life and the little nuances that make up your life.  Oliver was a lost soul, even more confused than most since his dad admitted he was gay the whole time him and his wife were married.  It resets your life in a way that you have to learn about someone you grew up with and raised you, all over again.  But while we have to begin a new relationship with someone who we thought we knew, we start a new with someone we want to know more about.  Anna and Oliver start their relationship essentially psychoanalyzing one another and embark on a whimsical relationship that has each character discovering love and themselves over the course of their time together….more